Larger and larger quantities of data is stored on servers, as users store their photographs, videos, audio files, movies, and other multimedia data on servers. As the number of servers is increased, and the amount of data is increasing, it is becoming increasing difficult to keep up with storage needs.
FIG. 1 illustrates one embodiment of prior art storage. The process starts at block 110. At block 120, a storage request is received from the user. At block 130, the data is stored on the current storage unit. At block 140, the process determines whether a storage unit is full or failing. In one embodiment, the system monitors the storage unit state continuously. If a storage unit is failing or becoming full, at block 150, an administrator is notified to manually migrate data to a new storage unit. In the prior art, data was manually moved from one storage unit to another and any additional storage volumes and mount points were manually added to the system configuration. However, as the volume of data increases, this places a significant load on administrators, and may lead to storage units failing before an administrator is able to fix the problem or to failure conditions introduced by human error.